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The 2010 Soccer Worldcup is upon us in South Africa. My mood changes from mild excitement to complete ecstasy day by day as we draw closer. This is surely one of the biggest mass events ever to be hosted on the African continent and I cannot be more proud to be a South Africa during this period. We’ve come a very long way over the last 300 years or so since Jan van Riebeeck arrived in Cape Town, to the first Democratic elections in 1994, to winning the Rugby Worldcups in 1995 and 2007.
Anyway as a tribute to Bafana Bafana and the fans who have gone out in thousands today in Johannesburg and across South Africa I post this video clip for the trailer of Invictus, the film starring Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela and Matt Damon as Francious Pienaar. Few South African films have touched me as deeply as this movie. And I am not embarrassed to say that during several scenes I became so emotional that I cried. Knowing that I was there during 1990s when all these major events that have changed our world happened, makes me feel like we can certainly accomplish anything we set our mind too. Miracles don’t always happen overnight, they may take 27 years!
And here’s the actual Invictus poem by William Ernest Henley…
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.